Notebandi pushes mobile panic button rollout to February

The government’s plan to introduce mandatory panic button on mobile phones as a safety measure for women in distress may have to wait for some more time. Faced with a dip in sales post demonetisation, mobile manufacturers have sought more time to clear their old stocks before getting panic button-enabled ones.Ambika Pandit | TNN | January 02, 2017, 16:39 IST

NEW DELHI: The government’s plan to introduce mandatory panic button on mobile phones as a safety measure for women in distress may have to wait for some more time. Faced with a dip in sales post demonetisation, mobile manufacturers have sought more time to clear their old stocks before getting panic button-enabled ones.

The plan was to be in place from January 1 but now the ministry of women and child development hopes to introduce the panic button sometime in February. The project, which is being monitored by PMO, was reviewed by secretaries of WCD ministry and department of telecommunication last week. It is learnt that the companies have conveyed their inability due to large inventory following demonetisation that has resulted in poor sales in the last two months. “They want some time but are very much on board to implement the panic button scheme,” a source said.

The ‘Panic Button and Global Positioning System in Mobile Phone Handsets Rules 2016’ were notified by the telecommunications department after relentless pursuit by the WCD ministry since 2014.

Under the rules, all new feature phones will have a panic button configured to the numeric key 5 or 9 and all smartphones will have the panic button configured to three times short pressing of the power button. The phones will be required to have the facility of identifying the location through GPS. The alerts will not only go out to police but also to notified persons.

“It is the first time in the world that the hardware is being changed so that women can press a button to seek help in an emergency. Now, we need to get mobile manufacturers to repair the phones that that have been already sold to make way for the feature,” WCD minister Maneka Gandhi told TOI. “We are also working to put in an application so that the alert goes to 10 nearest people in proximity so that till police comes people around are alerted.”